The imperial institution's capacity for survival, despite the many transformations in Japanese society and politics over the past thirteen hundred years, has few parallels in the history of human institutions. In 1965 the Imperial Household Agency could legitimately claim that the structure for managing the palace even today, though changed several times, including the ‘epoch-making’ renovation of 1947, could be traced back to the Taihō Institutes of 701.

The emergence of new groups in society willing and able to supply capital and enterprise to modern industry is one of the crucial aspects of economic development. The sources of entrepreneurship in China and the relations of those entrepreneurs with the rest of society have been insufficiently studied. Previous writers have tended to focus on outstanding individuals such as Sheng Hsuan-huai and Chang Chien, and to pay insufficient attention to their more run-of-the-mill followers. This paper surveys the changing sources of entrepreneurship in the Chinese coal industry between 1895 and 1937 and suggests reasons for the prominence or otherwise of the various groups involved. The concept of entrepreneurship used here is one much wider than the classic Schumpeterian definition, and includes the followers and adaptors who, as Redlich points out, also make a vital contribution to industrialization. Thus we take into our view all those who made a contribution to the development of modern coal mining enterprises as entrepreneurs, as managers or as stockholders—in many cases these functions overlapped. The companies covered are those owned either wholly or partly by Chinese nationals. Such companies accounted for 50–60 per cent of China's coal output of about 30 million tons in the 1930s.

Faced with the progression of events outlined above, it is small wonder that observers of the Thai political scene at times are a bit baffled as to precisely what is transpiring in the kingdom's continued search for a stable political future. Yet beneath the headlines and seemingly blatant military power grabbing lies a web of internal happenings which is not only in a sense predictable, but to which there is an order and a fitful progress towards some form of popular representation. That this is so will become clear in the course of this analysis dealing with the military role in politics since the coup of October 1976 ended Thailand's chaotic three-year democratic experiment and reinstated ‘uniformed power’.

Sociologists of western religion have devoted much time and effort to delineating the principal characteristics of the denomination. The discussion has emerged very largely from the distinction drawn in 1912 by Troeltsch between church and sect. The latter is represented as radical and egalitarian, at odds with the society of which it is a part, and demanding total commitment from its followers. By comparison, the former is hierarchic and conservative, at one with its social surroundings, and generally less concerned about the varying extent of members' adherence to the corporate body. There has ensued considerable discussion regarding the adequacy of this dichtomy, and a number of refinements and alternative schema have been proposed.

Thomas George Williamson, soldier, composer, music publisher and author, died in Paris in 1817. Though neither a great soldier nor particularly a significant creative writer, his attainments have qualified him for a short mention in various biographies and encyclopedias. None of these presents anything approaching an account of the whole man, however, because Williamson had a wide range of interests in which he invested his creative energies and he is known only from the standpoint of each of the subject specializations concerned without reference to the others. The present study was initiated by a commission to write an article on Williamson the composer for the new Grove's Dictionary of Music & Musicians, on whom in the previous edition three sentences had been devoted. Besides adding to a knowledge of his musical activities, source material has been brought together which could be of interest to historians and sociologists, not least in Asian studies. For Williamson's story has very much to do with the twenty years he lived in India before his return to England in 1798, both because this period was the career part of his life and on account of the wealth of experiences that it provided for him to draw upon later in his literary and musical compositions.